Gérard Garouste "On the way" - 27 June to 29 November, 2015

Gérard Garouste’s popularity is only equaled by his singularity. "Never ask directions from someone who knows the way, you risk not getting lost": this quote from Rabbi Nachman of Bratslatells all about the whole process of the artist, who chooses figuration and the study of myths just as he uses the adventures of Don Quixote or of Tintin, to better explore human identity today.

The Maeght Foundation dedicates its summer exhibition to Gérard Garouste. It pays tribute to this enigmatic painter who has been exhibited in major galleries and national and international museums since the 1980s. This exhibition invites us to walk along with the artist, to discover or better understand the movement from which his principle is built.After an exhibition dedicated to Jörg Immendorff, Olivier Kaeppelin, Director of the Maeght Foundation wishes, with Gérard Garouste, to continue questioning the engaged figure of the artist.

The exhibition proposed by the Maeght Foundation is an opportunity to discover a set of about 80 paintings, sculptures and drawings with new works, specially created in 2015 for this exhibition.

The exhibition layout proposed reads like a provocative journey of interpretations and free associations. The exhibition presents figures that become more familiar through the discoveries, or, instead, become more foreign. Scenes from literary or mythological inspiration interact with family portraits and friends, like a game of funhouse mirrors. The relationships between the works follow the thread of restless thought that the creator offers us.

EXHIBITION CALENDAR 2015

The artist is an actor and an essential figure at the Maeght Foundation. He is a person and a character. The exhibitions of 2015 will focus on the representation, the analyzes and the fictions in which the artist is the object through the works of Jörg Immendorff, followed by Gérard Garouste and finally Richard Deacon,Sui Jianguo and Henk Visch in the form of a dialogue.

Past exhibitions presented the collection of Gori Giuliano whose theme was the creation of an artistic territory, "Arcadia in Celle", in the hills of Tuscany and the collection of Bernard Massini on the question of human nature’s ambivalence. This time, the Maeght Foundation will present, from 28 March to 14 June, Michael Werner’s choice devoted to a single artist, Jörg Immendorff, and an in-depth study of his work, "It is through his long companionship and passion for his art that we have chosen a series of works with the artist as the main character on different pictorial, social, epic, romantic and mental scenes or on the stage of the History of art such as Immendorff imagined them", explained Olivier Kaeppelin.

With Gérard Garouste, the artist's representation will also be at the heart of the major summer exhibition from 27 June to 29 November. This artist inhabits a space that Gérard Garouste himself described: “this space is one of restlessness, madness". The main character is this restless one, “L’Intranquille”, the title of a book written by Garouste; a self-portrait of a son, a painter , a madman. (L’Intranquille. Autoportrait d’un fils, d’un peintre, d’un fou.)

The last show of the year which will begin on 12December will be in the form of a dialogue at the Maeght Foundation between three contemporary sculptors: Richard Deacon from Great Britain, Sui Jianguo from China and Henk Visch from the Netherlands. Alll have worked and exchanged together for several years and they ask the question, "What does it mean to be a sculptor, that is to say, what is sculpture in 2014?